they are not going to lose by the same margins that john mccain did, even in a place like illinois, where mccain lost some of these districts by 20 points. that's not going to happen this year, so you can see those numbers going up, even in states that romney will lose, but because some of the states are completely off the map, places like pennsylvania, michigan, that means his pathway again has to go through a place like colorado, nevada, or ohio. >> you know, one of the problems with writing a column a couple times a week is you're sort of on the record, and a fewer months ago, i wrote a column and i was talking about all these people that are spinning so much time parsing together combinations of electoral votes, like they were trying to solve a rubics cube or something and i pointed out that in 53 out of knife 6 presidential election -- 56 presidential electionings, the popular vote and electoral vote went the same way and that works out to 95%. could it happen? of course it could happen but it's very, very unlikely, but now, i think that there's a fair chance of that, and if that hap